


Book Girl

by PeniG



Series: Akashic Records [24]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Dining at the Ritz (Good Omens), F/M, Gen, Other, Post-Canon, Starting Fresh, Wedding, defense strategies, ineffable husbands, nature of prophecy, prophecy problems, witchfinder army
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:21:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21677416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: Anathema feels a bit lost in the wake of Armageddoff, and she's still mad at the men who stole her book. But what kind of person would interfere with Madame Tracy's big day? While trying to sort through two sets of memories, she keeps learning new things - about prophecies, and book thieves, and Agnes, and herself.
Relationships: Anathema Device/Newton Pulsifer, Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Sergeant Shadwell/Madame Tracy (Good Omens)
Series: Akashic Records [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1446628
Comments: 72
Kudos: 286





	1. And You Shall Be There Also, Anathema

When they walked into the registry office and saw the men standing with the bride, Anathema stopped dead and said: “ _Them_! They stole my book!”

“But - you have your book,” said Newt. “It’s at the cottage on the mantelpiece. Isn’t it?”

“It is, but - “ Anathema braced her feet against the mutually incompatible states of being clashing in her head, and then the bride spotted them and waved them over, smiling a smile that hit Shadwell over the head like a poleax, leaving him stunned as well as unnaturally clean and whiskerless, with his mouth open and his joints locked. It took both Newt and Anathema to wrangle him through the couples awaiting their turns to be married, to the other side of the room, where Madame Tracy bestowed kisses all around and the pink-haired teen next to her looked awkward while the shorter fluffier man beamed and the taller one in the fancy sunglasses said: “Hi, book girl.”

“She has a name, dearest,” said the shorter fluffier one. “Please feel under no obligation to excuse him. He does it on purpose and will be disappointed if you're not annoyed. You may not remember us very well. We met at the airbase, and once before, but one way and another introductions were rather glossed over. I’m Aziraphale, and this is my husband Crowley.”

Crowley’s face and ears flushed, and he made an inarticulate sound.

“Um, I’m Newt and this is Anathema,” said Newt.

Anathema’s head buzzed. She opened her mouth, expecting polite nothings to fall out, but instead she said: “ _You’re the men who stole my book!_ ”

“We brought it back,” protested Crowley.

“Burned to a crisp!”

Aziraphale looked dismayed. “Oh, _no_! Didn’t it get fixed in the reset? When Crowley’s car and the bookshop and the M25 all came back good as new I assumed the book would do the same.”

“The - reset - “ Anathema faltered.

“Your book is fine,” said Newt. “It’s on the mantelpiece, good as new, except for that picture you drew in it.”

Anathema blinked, shook her head, and remembered. Yes, of course. Her book was fine. And Madame Tracy, who looked gorgeous, with a new perm and nail art and a pink suitdress, was introducing the teen as her great-niece Izzy, and they weren’t _here_ about her book, they were here for a wedding between a terrible old man who was completely out of his depth and a wonderful old woman who didn’t seem to think that anything was out of the ordinary at all. _Pull it together, Anathema!_

They got through the wait largely on the strength of Madame Tracy’s and Aziraphale’s capacity to carry everyone else along on a wave of laughter and conversation, and through the wedding vows by dint of Newt standing behind Shadwell and poking him every time he was supposed to say “I do,” and then Crowley and Aziraphale whisked the happy couple off to the Ritz with Izzy, Newt, and Anathema trailing after their huge black car as if Dick Turpin were flotsam caught in a boat wake. The book thieves seemed perfectly at home in the Ritz - in fact the whole staff seemed to know them - and Madame Tracy was delighted with everything, apparently incapable of feeling out of place, but the same could not be said of Shadwell, Izzy, or Newt. Anathema - who thought of herself (as most rich Americans do) as “comfortably off” and had often eaten in similar places - found herself in a tactful partnership with Aziraphale to mediate the new environment for them. And all the time, two incompatible states of being buzzed in her head, and she was convinced she looked almost as confused as Newt habitually did.

Which was endearing on Newt, but somehow Not Acceptable for Anathema, only she couldn’t force her way out of it. 

She wanted to be mad at the book thieves, but only a monster would have done or said anything to spoil Madame Tracy’s big day. Even the other diners who occasionally turned to look at them after a particularly loud laugh, some of whom must have been annoyed, softened at once, and smiled, and the whole dining room seemed suffused with a golden glow, that only got more golden as toasts went round. Any number of things that should have been awkward, weren’t: Izzy, lost and young amid older strangers, relaxing and discussing science fiction animatedly with the perpetually lost-looking Newt; Shadwell addressing his bride as “Jezebel,” in a tone that implied that a Jezebel was someone to be cherished and wondered at; Crowley taking one bite out of everything he ordered and then pushing the plate toward Aziraphale, who ate his own meal and his husband’s as if they were all one meal, while Crowley watched him with what should have been an embarrassing amount of visible pleasure; inside jokes that seemed to reach out and include the whole table so that Anathema found herself laughing, not at the joke, but at the shared sly hilarity of the jokers; and herself actually discussing book preservation with Aziraphale, though how they got there, she had no idea. The tab must have been astronomical, but Crowley didn’t even look at it before turning over his plastic.

When Newt stood up, he staggered, and Anathema caught him. “Um,” he said. “I shouldn’t have drunk all those toasts. I’m not sure I should drive.”

Aziraphale came up behind him. “Oh, dear, yes, that could be a problem. Here.” He patted Newt on the shoulder. The slack look around Newt’s eyes tightened, his mouth worked as if he tasted something unpleasant, and he looked normal again. “Better?”

“Um. Yes.” Newt gawped at him. “How did you -?”

It occurred to Anathema to look for Aziraphale’s aura. At first she couldn’t see it; and then Crowley moved around behind him, creating ripples in the golden glow that filled the dining room, and she realized that she’d been seeing both their auras, all along.

Meanwhile Aziraphale smiled and said: “A mere party trick. Think nothing of it. This is hardly the occasion, but we all have business - rather important business - to discuss, as soon as feasible, and of course there’s the issue of the book. So we’ll leave you our cards - “ He pressed two of them into Anathema’s hand - “and you can call us whenever you like. We’ll be helping the Shadwells move and that may be the proper time for an extended meet-up, but feel free to call us any time. Especially if anything happens - in Tadfield, I mean - that makes you at all, at all _nervous_.”

“N-nervous?” Newt asked.

“If you see somebody or something that scares the crap out of you,” said Crowley. “Or you find out someone’s been creeping around the kids. Or you smell rotten eggs. Don’t hang around worrying if you’re imagining things. You _won’t_ be. Just call.”

“All right, that’s not terrifying at all,” said Anathema. “By kids you mean -?”

“The Them, who else? But any creepers in town, really, we’d like a word with.”

Then Madame Tracy wanted pictures, including one with the waiter, and Anathema didn’t find another good opportunity to ask more questions or achieve greater clarity before they were driving off in Dick Turpin with the happy couple in the back seat while Izzy waved to them from the big black car. Madame Tracy spontaneously explained how Izzy, poor lamb, had been staying with Madame Tracy after her mother threw her out, but Aziraphale had gone with them to talk to her niece and everything was fine now, those two were taking her back to her mother’s, where she would be living, and working after school in the bookshop, and Patsy was really _trying_ not to be so judgmental; whereat Shadwell helpfully remarked that her whole family were a bunch of tossers and probably all had the wrong number of nipples or gave their cats funny names, Izzy apart because _she_ was a nice lass. 

Anathema had not known Shadwell long, but had already learned that she couldn’t deal with the conversation that followed this sort of remark, even had she been sober, so she examined the cards clutched in her hands. The white one with blue lettering gave her the address and phone number of A.Z. Fell’s Antiquarian and Unusual Books, while the slick black one with barely legible white lettering and a logo similar to the snake tattoo by Crowley’s ear had no address, just Anthony J Crowley and a phone number. She put them both into her handbag and puzzled over the hints dropped around her today.

Evening was getting on when they reached their destination, and Madame Tracy pulled Shadwell into her flat with much giggling on her part and befuddled chiding on his, leaving Anathema and Newt to make the best they could of Shadwell’s place. “I’m sorry it’s such a pit,” said Newt. “It’s awfully nice of you to stay and be moral support at the estate agent’s tomorrow. I’m dreading it so much!”

Anathema choked on the stale tobacco-stained air, and went straight to a window to force it up. The home base of the Witchfinder Army looked less strange to her than it would have to many people, with its display cases, stacks of clippings, and shelves of ominous books; but whereas the dens of occult knowledge with which she was familiar were homey and well-loved, this one felt dingy and depressed. “I’m not sure what makes it your job to look after him,” said Anathema. “Now that Tracy’s officially taken him on and everything.” She looked around for a place to sit. Newt moved a stack of newspapers off a loveseat.

“I’m not sure, either,” said Newt, displacing magazines to sit down next to her. “Only - us weirdos have to stick together. And I’m not sure Madame Tracy can be expected to handle an estate agent and Shadwell, at the same time, and who else is there?”

“Aziraphale or Crowley, I suppose. Whoever they are, she seems thick as, as _book thieves_ with them.” Anathema pulled the cards out of her handbag and held them out for him to see. “What do you make of them?”

Newt touched the black card. “The book was burned. He threw it to you, and it was falling apart. Only it’s home on the mantelpiece and it’s fine. And we were never at the airfield, anyway.”

“Okay, I don’t think we should pay attention to the memories that don’t have us at the airfield at all,” said Anathema. “Because my entire life makes no sense if we weren’t at the airfield, and I can’t face that.”

“Fair enough. We were at the airfield, and we saved the world.”

“We helped. I think...I think quite a few people saved the world, a little here and a little there.”

“Which makes sense, honestly. The world’s a big place. You’d need a lot of things coming together to end it and one or two people couldn’t be expected to stop every single thing.” 

_And you shall be there also, Anathema_...That was what Agnes had told her. Not “everything depends on you” but “you shall be there also.” It wasn’t Agnes’s fault - was it? - that she had felt saddled with the entire responsibility for averting Armageddon. She didn’t know how she felt, now, about sharing that responsibility around, with Newt and The Them and the Shadwells, and the book thieves. Who had hit her with their car and taken her home uninjured and gone on their merry way, only to turn up again at the end and do - what _had_ they done? Talked a lot, to, to, who _was_ it they had talked to? She felt more disoriented now, with champagne and conflicting memories, than she had in the aftermath of the accident. By comparison with the airfield, the accident was reassuringly solid and comprehensible. 

She flicked the white card. “A.Z. Fell Antiquarian and Unusual Books. That explains stealing the book. Dealers used to call all the time offering ridiculous prices for it.”

“In that case it was nice of them to bring it back.”

“But if Aziraphale’s the bookseller, why was Crowley the one to bring it back? And how could they be careless enough to let it get burned?” 

“I don’t know. Do you want to call and ask them?”

Anathema leaned against him. She had spent a lot of time in the past few weeks second-guessing her own feelings for Newt, but at moments like this, he was warm, he was solid, he was present, he demanded nothing of her, and he asked good sensible questions. “Not right now. Not till I’ve worked through the champagne. Did...Aziraphale patted you on the back and you sobered up. At least, that’s what it looked like.”

“That’s what it felt like, too.” Newt put his arm around her, in that tentative way he did, as if he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to be allowed to do it and maybe he’d wake up in a minute and find he wasn’t allowed, after all. She felt how he held his breath, and how he didn’t let it go and take a new one until she snuggled in a bit. “So. You haven’t been in London before because you were too busy saving the world. Want to go see a show or something?”

“Can you get into London shows without buying tickets ahead of time?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been to one.”

Never. Faced with the annihilation of the world, Newt had a list of regrets, all consisting of Nevers - never eaten Thai food, never kissed a girl, never been abroad. Maybe that made him lame, but...she had a lot of nevers of her own. They should take care of a few more of those. Together, because that was how you found out if you belonged together or were coasting because it was easy. (Easy was nice. She liked easy.) Not tonight, though. “I’m still too stressed,” Anathema said. “We should do that sometime, for sure, but not tonight. Tonight I feel like, like digging through obscure references and doing research. That’s the kind of thing that really calms me down.”

“Oh, boy, do I have a treat for you, then.” Newt kissed the top of her head. “Let me introduce you to the accounting records of the Witchfinder Army!”


	2. The Light of Truth, Flickering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anathema learns more about the Shadwells' strange friends, and other things she's less than happy about.

The estate agent visit didn’t go the way Anathema expected. After all, as the Witchfinder Army accounts clearly showed, Shadwell was essentially a conman with a failed locksmithing business on the side; and Madame Tracy was a sex worker and a medium. Both were retiring with one personal savings account and one small pension between them. No real estate professional back in the states would have considered them good prospects for home ownership. Shadwell being in too dazed and euphoric a condition to ask about nipples should not have been enough to make the meeting go well.

Yet everything went very well indeed, and much faster than reasonable. The credit check ran and inexplicably came back favorable while they were still in the office, an agent was available to go out to the desired bungalow the same afternoon, and an offer was made and accepted on the spot. Anathema, treating them all to a meal (she was completely confused about which meal it was; at home it would have been an early supper) in the tea shop on Tadfield’s High Street, didn’t like to risk spoiling the good mood, but couldn’t help asking: “Is it always so easy to buy property here? It seems like it should be harder than back home, given how much less, you know, _property_ there is.” (Were English people sensitive about the fact that their country was so tiny? If so, she'd apologize.)

“I dunno, lassie, never bought any before,” said Shadwell.

“I think it’s normally harder than this,” said Newt. “I’ve always been a renter, myself, and that’s _much_ harder.”

“Oh, that’ll be Zira’s doing,” said Madame Tracy. “We had a nice little afternoon out last week, and he was telling me he’d feel better, having someone to keep an eye on things around here. And the bungalow’s just right for that, isn’t it? Lovely view of Hogback Wood, and down your lane, and over those houses where those children live, and all.”

Anathema stared at her, horrified. “He...wants you to _spy_ on us?”

“Oh, no, dear, nothing like _that_. But if any of those odd people come around, I can call our two and they’ll be here in a jiff.”

Odd people. Four odd people, with auras like black holes...the book thieves, talking to a, a little buzzy - woman? And a, a, a -

“Back up a bit,” said Newt. “You think a _bookseller_ has enough clout with an estate agent, or the bank, to, what? Ensure you pass your credit check?”

“More likely that Crowley,” said Shadwell. “Pretty sure he’s Mafia, like his father before him. Not the sort of person a mere estate agent’d want to cross.”

 _Mafia?_ Anathema’s fingers itched for pages to flip through, for the reassuring sensation of worn index cards which, somewhere, held the answer, for those clever enough to find it. 

“ _You_ weren’t afraid to cheat him, though,” Newt pointed out.

Shadwell made a noise like an indignant terrier. “I _never_ cheated him! I never cheated nobody!”

“You double-billed him and his husband for the wages of an imaginary army,” said Anathema. “Pitifully small wages, but still.”

“The NCOs didn’t have authority to increase wages after the last officer died!” Shadwell protested. “I did the books just like Witchfinder Sgt. Ffolkes taught me - keep the rosters full and send the bills and the clipping analysis to The Southern Pansy. I got a medal for bringing Crowley’s father in on the thing. The way inflation was going we needed another set of deep pockets, and the Crowleys didn’t even ask for the clippings. Just sent us out fact-finding once in awhile, or doing some little job. I didn’t know Crowley Junior’d grow up a twink and marry Fell, did I? I didn’t know either of ‘em _was_ married, let alone to each other! If they didn’t tell each other who they was hiring how was _I_ to know I was double-billing?”

“What _sort_ of little jobs?” Newt asked. “Just - things like looking into Tadfield?”

Shadwell shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes it’d be random as hell - go to a corner and wait’ll a rat come out of the sewer and give me the end of a line to tie off on the grate, and yank it twice. That kind of thing. A few times he had us staking out the bookshop.” He took a slug of tea, so thick with milk and sugar he nearly had to chew it.

“You _spied_ on his _husband_ for him?”

Shadwell shook his head. “Naw, this was back in the late 60s, early 70s, so it wasn’t _this_ Crowley, but his old man. The Southern Pansy had us keeping tabs right back at him at the same time, so it was convenient, like.”

“So, the elder Crowley had you spying on the elder Fell.” Newt was clearly doing that thing where he sorted information in his head as he got it, like someone picking up cards as they were dealt and arranging them by suit and value.

“Nah, The Southern Pansy’s always been the same, right back to the beginning.”

“You shouldn’t call him that,” said Newt, at the same time that Anathema asked: “When was the beginning?”

“He calls _himself_ that,” said Shadwell. “Don’t remember when or how, exactly, but I can hear him now clear as day. ‘Not _a_ Southern Pansy, Sergeant; _The_ Southern Pansy.’ Proud as Lucifer of it. And the beginning, let’s see, that goes right back to the darkest days of the Witchfinder Army, when the light of truth started going out and we were being persecuted.”

“Persecuted. The Witchfinder Army. Right.”

Shadwell seemed oblivious to her tone. Newt did not. “Aye, it’s all in the records. Our Witchfinder Generals were dead or forced into retirement, our Witchfinder Colonels were having trouble collecting their pay from the towns, the king was coming back! It seemed the writing was on the wall! We were contemplating drastic action, when along comes Mr. Fell with suggestions on how to go underground, like. How to seek out witches using fewer pins and more scissors. And not only suggestions, but a _payroll!_ Only we had to lay low, ye ken, learn to be subtle. Fewer burnings and more documentation. And he’s _never_ been late with a payment.”

“The king was coming back. You mean - _Charles the Second?_ ” Newt sounded dubious, even for him. Anathema knew a little more about mid-seventeenth century British history than most Americans did, and didn’t blame him. 

“Aye, that’s the one. Thought he’d put an end to us, Charles the Second did, but here we still are.”

“You mean, the Fell family’s been backing the Witchfinder Army for almost three hundred years?” Anathema accepted the burden of saying it out loud.

Shadwell shook his head. “Nay, ain’t ye been listening a bit? Only been _one_ Mr. Fell. The Southern Pansy with the bookshop.”

“So. Aziraphale. Who was at the wedding yesterday. Is three hundred years old.”

“That’s right, lass. Older’n that, I expect.”

She looked at Newt, who looked at her, and took his turn to ask the obvious question. “That...doesn’t seem odd, to you?”

Shadwell shrugged. “He’s on the side of light and he pays cash, laddie! S’all the Witchfinder Army ever cared about.”

That statement had too many things wrong with it for Anathema even to begin dealing with it. 

“Thinking too much about these things doesn’t help,” said Madame Tracy, pouring herself more tea. “You’ve lived your whole life guided by a book of prophecy, Newt destroys computers, Atlantis rose from the bottom of the sea except that it didn’t, a nice little boy was the Antichrist and isn’t anymore, and we all did our bits to save the world a couple of weeks ago, but none of us were at the airfield where it didn’t happen. And the thing that worries _you_ is that someone who’s ever so nice and made Newt sober enough to drive is a bit long in the tooth? His friends in Soho say _you don’t talk about Mr. Fell_ and I think it’s good advice. Sometimes all you can do is admit that life is strange and get on with things.” She took a sip, leaving pink lipstick smudges on the teacup, and leaned forward. “What’s worrying _me_ is, I’ve never had a garden before and I don’t know if I should plan to do anything to it in the autumn or not. There’s all kinds of flowers I’d fancy having, but I’ve never had the chance.”

Anathema took Newt’s hand under the table, and squeezed it. He squeezed back. Thus mutually reinforced, they allowed her to change the subject.

After they saw the Shadwells off on the bus back to London, and returned to Jasmine Cottage in the twilight, Anathema marched straight over to the mantelpiece and picked up the book. The familiar weight and the unburned smoothness of the cover, worn by the hands of generations of Devices, made her feel better. She plopped into the nearest armchair, hugging it to her, wanting to open it, to search its pages for clarity. The answers were always in the book.

Except, not this book. Not anymore. This book was finished. She could reread it as many times as she wanted to, but it would hold no more new answers for her. She had burned the book with the new answers. The book that would - might? - enable her to make sense of a 300-year-old man with a Mafia husband, two sets of memories, a boyfriend who, who, who -

Newt squeezed into the chair beside her. “Are you sorry I talked you into burning the second book?”

“No!” Life was strange. This was not Newt’s fault. Uncertainty is the price of freedom. “Maybe? When we burned it, I wasn’t expecting...I thought, I’d be normal, going forward. That it’d be exciting, but not _weird_ , you know? Not like my life had been. Like other people’s. Ordinary people’s.”

“If you expected to suddenly turn ordinary, it’s no wonder you’re upset. But I could have told you that wasn’t going to happen.” He kissed her. “What, exactly, are you worried about?”

“A 300-year-old book thief who married a guy from the Mafia and has bankrolled the Witchfinder Army - the institution that murdered my most important ancestor - instead of letting them die out. Who wants an eye kept on us.”

“I’m worried about all that, too,” said Newt. “But I was thinking it’s time to pick up a phone.”

“You know, if either of them says Crowley’s not in the Mafia, or that Aziraphale’s not three hundred years old, it won’t mean anything.”

“You know, Shadwell saying they _are_ doesn’t mean anything, either. We’ll hear what they have to say and see what makes sense. Didn’t you ever deal with anybody you didn’t have prophecies about before? That’s all this is.”

Anathema remembered the girl who’d spread the rumor that she and her family sacrificed kittens in the woods. Agnes hadn’t had a word to say about her. And then there was the time her cousins Tobit and Solstice had both sworn blind that the other was the one who’d borrowed, and broken, her Nintendo. Agnes had been no help sorting that one out, either. “I guess so,” she said, pulling her phone out. “All right. Which one first? I mean, they’re married, so if we get one we potentially get the other, but - who should we aim for?”

“The bookshop? He’s...the other one makes me nervous.”

“And Aziraphale doesn’t? They both give me the willies. But I guess I do have more questions for him.” She dialed the number on the white card. “Of course, the bookshop may be closed already. I guess the home number’s probably the other one.”

The ringing at the other end sounded strange, tinny and shrill in a way she wasn’t used to, ending in unfamiliar clicks and rattles. The answering voice was perfectly clear, though, if a little distant sounding. “I’m sorry, we’re closed.”

“Why did you bankroll a violently misogynistic organization like the Witchfinder Army for three hundred years?” Anathema demanded, putting him on speaker.

“I needed help tracking occult activity,” the prim voice on the other end said promptly. “And once I got them clipping newspapers and collecting broadsheets for me they didn’t have time to get up to misogynistic violence. For the most part. I’m afraid I can’t swear none of them ever beat their wives. Free will and all that, you know. Most of them didn’t marry, though, I’m happy to say. It’s lovely to hear from you, Anathema. Hold on one moment, will you, please?” His voice withdrew from the phone, but could still be heard saying: “Crowley, it’s Anathema! Your mobile telephone can talk to two other telephones at once, can’t it?”

“That’s not a feature with rotary phones,” said Crowley’s voice, muffled with distance from the speaker.

“I know, dearest, that’s why I’m asking _you_ to do it.” 

“Oh, all right.” The phone produced a few extraordinary noises, as Anathema stared at Newt and mouthed: “Rotary phones?” Suddenly the quality of sound changed again and Crowley’s voice came out, as clear as if he stood next to them. “Hi, book girl. What’s up?”

Book girl. It was an apt nickname, but what the hell entitled him to give her a nickname? “The Shadwells bought their bungalow today,” she answered. “I mean, beginning to end, just about. Credit checked, house viewed, offer made and accepted.”

“Good for them.”

“Oh, how nice! I’m so glad!”

The answers overlapped each other. 

“Tracy thinks you had, that one of you, did something.”

“Oh, I blessed her endeavor, of course,” said Aziraphale. “I feel the debt I owe her strongly, you know, and besides, having her there to keep an eye on things will be so convenient.”

The number of questions this reply spawned was so large, Anathema had difficulty choosing, but she finally went with the one that disturbed her most. “What do you mean, keep an eye on things?”

“I think it would be better to go into detail about that face-to-face, but essentially I mean, we’ve had a bit of fallout from our part in stopping Armageddon, and we’re afraid you humans might as well, and if you do, we want to know about it, so we can help you. It seems the least we can do.”

_You humans?_

“Er - what _kind_ of fallout?” Newt asked.

“Well -“ 

Crowley’s voice rolled over Aziraphale’s. “The kind you’d need our help with. Everything all right up there? Anything freaking you out?”

“Just some things Shadwell said. Are you in the Mafia?” Anathema could tell Newt was being very brave, asking this; though why he thought the Mafia were worse than the Witchfinder Army, she wasn't sure.

“Nope. But I can see where Shadwell’d think that.” Crowley sounded amused.

Anathema couldn’t bear it any longer, and burst out with the question that had been rankling since before the end of the world. _“Why did you steal my book?”_

“We didn’t _steal_ it! You left it in my car! And I was in enough trouble without returning lost property!”

“I should have returned it at once, I know,” said Aziraphale, before she could parse that. “But, as you may be aware, your ancestress’s work is a very rare book indeed. And happens to be in a genre in which I specialize. I couldn’t resist the chance to take a peek inside. And once I did - well! I could only do as I was bid and read, which told me where the Antichrist was, and from that point I’m afraid my duty to return it was the last thing on my mind.”

“Wait, as you were _bid?_ ” Anathema sat up straight, spilling Newt out of the chair and onto the floor. “As _who_ bid?”

“Agnes. She addressed me rather pointedly. I wasn’t about to ignore her.”

“Where does she do that?” Anathema started paging frantically through the book, running verses in her head. “And you - figured out where the Antichrist was? From reading the book?” No theodolites, no pendulums, no tramping all over town?

“It took me all night, but yes. It was so simple, in the end, I almost couldn’t believe it, but when I called -“

_“Called?”_

“Prophecy 3817. I rang the number just as Adam finished teaching his dog to walk on his hind legs and was shouting to inform his father.”

“And it took you _all night_?”

“Goodness, yes. Well, you know yourself, better than anyone, I expect, how difficult it is to line everything up so that the thing you want pops out at you. Agnes was brilliant, but logical organization was _not_ her strong suit! Still, given what she had to work with...”

Aziraphale kept talking, his voice a soothing New Age track in the background as Anathema read Prophecy 3817:

**The number of the Beast is in the revelayting of Sainte John, call hym in Taddes field. And ye will know hym by this sign, that when ye do call to hym, the Lesser Beaste will walk upon his hinde legs like unto a Dancing Bear.**

She knew this prophecy. Of course she did. She’d sweated over it, and twisted it, and turned it, and consulted the family’s notes on it, and tried seven ways from Sunday to clarify it. The number of the Beast was 666 (or 667, according to some modern scholars), everyone knew that, and Taddes field was obvious enough, but - “So you just called him up? The Number of the Beast was a _phone number_? And he’d taught Dog to walk on his hind legs? Right that minute?”

“Yes, that’s right. I was gobsmacked. Are you all right, my dear?”

“I’m _not_ your dear. Where does she bid you to read?”

“Prophecy 3008. Very sorry to presume.”

“No need to get snippy, book girl, all he did was answer your -“

“Hush, dearest, I’m afraid I’ve put my foot in it. You can’t hold that against her.”

“The heaven I can’t. Watch me.”

**3008: When that the angel readeth these words of mine, in his shoppe of other menne’s books, then the final days are certes upon us. Open thine eyes to understand. Open thine eyes and rede, I do say, foolish principalitee, for thy cocoa doth grow cold.**

She remembered this one, too. Nobody’d ever been able to nail this one down, for all their grubbing in occult and historical texts, hunting alternate and symbolic meanings for everything - angel, cocoa, principalitee, _everything_. And they’d never come _close_. 

Because this prophecy wasn’t _for_ the family. It had always been intended for a bookseller, drinking cocoa ( _how dare he!)_ as he examined a rare, stolen book. 

Which meant that Agnes had _known_ he would have it.

Which meant that Agnes had _known_ Anathema would be hit by the car and be carried home in it and leave the book behind.

Which meant that Agnes hadn’t bothered to warn her that she would be _hit by a car_ and lose the book -

Anathema screamed and hurled the book across the room so hard it bounced off the wall, knocked over a vase full of tranquillity-inducing herbs, and landed on the floor with its spine split.

“Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale. “I knew we should have gone over this face to face. I’m so sorry! This is my fault!”

“That bitch, that bitch, that _bitch_!” 

“It is not, angel! If it’s anybody’s fault, it’s Agnes’s.”

“I think we’d better hang up now,” said Newt. “Uh, nice talking to you. Bye.” He hit the “off” button. The phone sparked and sent up a cloud of smoke. A small, sane part of Anathema watched from deep inside her as she tore her hair and rocked back and forth, sobbing: “I gave my _life_ to her! I did every single thing she _wanted_ me to do! And she couldn’t be _bothered_ to tell me I’d get _hit by a car_ \- and while I’m running all over town swinging pendulums and getting flak from the neighborhood watch she gives a _book thief_ the Great Beast’s _phone number_ -“

“That sucks,” said Newt, taking her into the warmest, sweetest, most enveloping hug of her life. “It really, really sucks. Agnes did not deserve you.”

At which point, even the small, sane, interior part of Anathema broke down and cried.


	3. Cards on the Table Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Shadwells get help moving in. Anathema gets some answers, and a new mission in life.

A few days later, the Shadwells moved in. Aziraphale and Crowley drove them up to Tadfield in their big black car. Which had no bicycle rack. Anathema checked. 

The rented trailer was crammed with far more stuff than would seem to reasonably fit into it. Aziraphale and Crowley did most of the unloading, with a little help from Newt; but Newt could only carry about half as much as Crowley could in one trip, and Aziraphale happily hauled loads that should have strained three or four people, at one point carrying Madame Tracy’s scooter tucked under one arm while balancing an armchair on the opposite shoulder. He was not dressed for moving duty, being in the same pale three-piece suit Anathema vaguely remembered from the airfield, but nothing got dirty or even wrinkled. Crowley’s clothes should have been too tight for all the bending and lifting, but didn’t seem to inconvenience him at all.

Anathema remained calm throughout. Serene, even. As she’d explained to Newt when he asked if she was sure she wanted to go with him to help, she was Over It. Childish temper tantrums would fix nothing, it wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault Agnes was a stone cold bitch, and everything was _fine_ anyway, _she_ was fine, her _bike_ was fine, the goddamn stupid _book_ was fine, and the Shadwells needed help unpacking boxes and arranging furniture. 

The bungalow was modern, open-plan, with the kitchen, dining area, and lounge all one space and two bedrooms tucked off to the side with the bath in between. One of the bedrooms became the Witchfinder Army Museum and the other became gradually pinker and pinker, with stuffed animals a major decorating feature. Madame Tracy’s furniture took up most of the space, looking cheerfully tacky, while Shadwell’s seemed to huddle in its shadow, seeking protection. No stacks of newspapers or magazines had made the trip, and very few books. Aziraphale had bought all of Shadwell’s demonology books - for a pretty penny, the old man gloated - and Madame Tracy didn’t own many. When everything was unloaded and mostly unpacked, Crowley called the diner on the highway and ordered enough lunch to go around. 

“Diners deliver here?” Anathema asked.

“This one will, this time,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale joined Anathema in putting Madame Tracy’s dishes away in the cupboards. “How are you feeling, my dear?”

“Oh, I’m just fine,” said Anathema. “I mean, I worked my ass off my entire life trying to meet the expectations of a dead woman who couldn’t be bothered to tell me I was going to get _hit by a car_ so somebody else could get the Great Beast’s _phone number_ , but it’s okay. I’m over it.”

“What makes you think Agnes knew you’d be hit by a car?” 

“Of course she did. She knew everything.” Anathema stopped in the middle of unwrapping newspaper from around a plate. “Didn’t she?”

“If she’d known everything, she’d have run mad,” said Aziraphale. “Have you ever wondered how her prophetic gift worked?”

“Um, no. I mean, it obviously _did_ work. My whole family’s history proved that. I had, I had more important things to do than worry about how she did it.”

“Perhaps. But perhaps, if you’d understood the gift better, you’d have put less pressure on yourself. Agnes wasn’t telling you what to do. She was describing what she _saw_ you do.”

Anathema realized she was trembling, and put the dish down. “I know, I know, I didn’t have a choice about any of it -“

“No, my dear. It was _because_ of your choices that you did it all so well. Reading through the whole thing at once, as I did that night, it was amply clear how in awe Agnes was of you.”

“That is such bullshit.” Aziraphale’s eyes were a great deal too blue and a great deal too clear, as if multitudes of clear blue eyes were stacked on top of each other, each one increasing the eyeness exponentially; but Anathema managed to look straight into them without falling over. She blinked a lot, though. “I thought it was up to me to save the world and all I was, I was the _usher,_ getting people to the right places at the right time. And if getting hit by a car when I was out looking for somebody I wasn’t supposed to find got you to the right place at the right time, well, that was just too bad for me, wasn’t it?”

“She never saw the accident,” said Aziraphale, with absolute conviction. “She had no more idea how I got hold of the book than an ant has of musical notation. She didn’t _like_ my having it, at all. But she had chosen to write down everything she saw, in hope that she would be able to make sense of it someday, and when she realized she never could, but _you_ would, well! That made it bearable for her.”

Anathema felt her chin wobble. “But _you_ made sense of it, and it only took you one night! I had the book my whole life, my whole life _was_ the book, and I _still_ don’t understand it!”

“Oh, but my dear girl! I had the tremendous advantage over both of you, that I’ve lived _outside_ of time _and_ was part of the team that set up the Akashic Records. That’s what she got glimpses of, you see.”

The analytical part of her brain, which had been turning frantic circles for weeks now, sat up and took notice. “I’ve, I’ve heard of those. They’re the universe's records of everything that happens, everywhere.”

“Roughly. It’s more accurate to say that they’re a way of accessing and examining points in time on Earth. Which, from the point of view of someone standing outside of time, is all happening at once. It’s important to be precise in your search terms in order to get the information you need, in the degree of detail you need, without getting overwhelmed. Most angels find it awkward to use, I understand, and we had to invent concepts like ‘privacy’ and ‘linear time’ in order to prevent abuse of the system. I have no idea how some human minds gain access to any part of it, even though I’ve made a study of the phenomenon and met a number of prophets. Most of whom were broken by the experience. Agnes seems to have evaded that fate by not attempting to interpret anything she saw, but only to describe it. Although, I suppose, even she broke in the end.” He looked, suddenly, sad, and his sadness turned Anathema’s bones to water. “One must, I suppose, have some sort of fracture in one’s self, in order to load ones’s skirts with gunpowder and nails and walk to the fire.”

Anathema’s knees gave out on her and she sat, surprised to find a chair behind her. “Breathe, book girl,” said Crowley. “Angel, don’t overload the poor kid. We need her.”

Angel. It wasn’t a mere endearment. Agnes had _told_ her what Aziraphale was. Right there in prophecy 3008. (Had the Records shown him to her in a form she could understand as angelic, or was "seeing" a blanket term for a more comprehensive mode of perception?) And Crowley - “I’m fine,” she said, and it was true, this time. The world had been vague and fuzzy since the airfield, but now she finally had the settings right in her mind, like focusing a pair of binoculars, so that everything she wanted to look at was clear and sharp. “There was, Agnes wrote a second book. More prophecies for after the end of the world. I burned it.”

“Good for you,” said Crowley. “Just because she had to write it down, doesn’t mean you have to read it.”

“Yes, but - now I don’t know how anything will turn out.”

“So much the better,” said Aziraphale. “There’s no point in having choices, if you know the result ahead of time.”

The doorbell rang. “That diner’s fast,” said Crowley, as Madame Tracy answered the door.

It wasn’t lunch; it was Adam. And Dog, of course. “Hullo,” he said. “You’re the lady who wouldn’t let the angel shoot me.”

“So I am,” said Madame Tracy. “Look, everyone, it’s that nice former Antichrist! And such a sweet doggy! Come in, dear!” 

Anathema looked at Aziraphale. “You tried to _shoo_ t him?”

Aziraphale wrung his hands, looking devastated. “Weren’t you there for that part?” Crowley asked. “He didn’t _want_ to. It was my idea.”

“Yes, but when push came to shove you couldn’t actually _do_ it, and I _could_ ,” said Aziraphale. “I’m _so_ glad she stopped me!”

“Where’s the rest of you, then?” Madame Tracy asked Adam. 

“In school,” said Adam. “I’ll be in trouble for skipping later, but The Them’ll bring me all the homework and stuff, and this is more important.”

“You bet it is,” said Crowley, as Dog ran to jump on Anathema. “Come help us unpack.”

Adam approached, his face tentatively glowing. “Hi, Anathema. Dog, down! She doesn’t want your muddy paws all over her. It’s about time you two showed up again. Do you live here now?”

“No,” answered Crowley, as Anathema petted Dog and rearranged the contents of her brain to accommodate her new perspectives on her situation. “But Mr. and Mrs. Shadwell know how to get hold of us, and if everything goes well we’ll have occasion to be back and forth as often as is good for anybody.”

“All right. Only, you know, you said you’d be behind me, and I wasn’t sure, if you meant, just when - you know - it was happening, or if you’d be around later.”

“No, we meant whenever you needed us. But if we were here all the time, we’d be tempted to tell you what to do. You know how grownups are. Always thinking we know better. You’ve got as much of that as you need around here.”

“And then some!” Adam agreed.

They had the dishes almost all put up when the lunch arrived, delivered by a bewildered looking young man, to whom Aziraphale gave a large number of bills, with instructions to keep the change, so that he drove off looking every bit as bewildered, and much happier. Newt and Shadwell emerged from the Witchfinder Army Museum to gather with the others around Madame Tracy’s former seance table and help themselves to sandwiches, fries (only everyone but Anathema called them chips), deviled eggs, fruit, cheese, and cake. Madame Tracey produced a few bottles of something darkly alcoholic, something sweet and fizzy for Adam, and the required oodles of tea, which was all hot, and more than half the company insisted on putting milk into it, which still struck Anathema as deeply Wrong, but the day was cool enough that she didn’t mind a little hot tea herself, and it was no business of hers what other people drank. About a quarter of the sandwiches were even vegetarian, which was a lot more than she’d expected so far from California. It would have seemed like an excessively large lunch for the number of people, except that one of those people was Aziraphale, and another was a growing boy, and Dog was perfectly willing to help out with any non-vegetarian surplus.

At first the conversation was all of the pass-the-salt, why-would-you-call-soda-lemonade, Americans-are-daft sort; but after awhile Crowley, who seemed satisfied after swallowing a couple of deviled eggs and half a slice of angel cake without chewing, spoke up. “All right, now we’ve got everybody here, it’s cards on the table time. So -“ He pointed to himself “Demon, retired, get over it.” He pointed to Aziraphale, currently enjoying a cucumber sandwich more than it seemed possible to enjoy anything. “Angel, gone freelance. We will not be accepting personal or metaphysical questions at this time.”

“Oh!” Newt exclaimed. “ _That_ explains a _lot!”_

“I’m glad _somebody_ thinks so,” muttered Anathema, with residual snark, though in truth she didn’t need a book to tell her, _this makes sense, insofar as the world is capable of making sense._

Crowley kept talking. “So, world didn’t end awhile back, everybody here had something to do with that, we’ve all got confusing memories because Adam here created a paradox and good for him, saved the day. But. _Bad_ news. Adam’s power, which by the way we don’t know how much he still has, belongs to Earth. Had less effect in the other realms. The factions that were all set to end the world remember the original reality better than you lot do, and are miffed enough to team up to punish those they blame. _Good_ news: against all logic and reason, they blame Aziraphale and me more than anybody else. Tried to kill us. Failed. Haven’t tried again - yet.”

“Oh, my.” Madame Tracy’s eyes grew wide. Shadwell nodded, as if this were no more than he’d expected. Newt was still picking up the facts as they were dealt him and sorting them, suit and number. Anathema noted that Crowley considered the factions coming after him and his husband to be in the “good news” column, and decided to stop thinking of them as book thieves.

“We are hoping,” said Aziraphale, neatly dabbing nonexistent crumbs from his lips, “that they will continue their previous shortsighted underestimation of humanity’s agency, and continue to focus their attentions on us. They are _not_ flexible thinkers. You may remember how Gabriel and Beelzebub - my former boss and his, respectively - ignored everyone else in favor of trying to browbeat Adam into restarting the Apocalypse, and arguing with Crowley and me. I feel I must apologize for their rudeness.”

“You mean the tall one in the fancy suit and the short one in the fuzzy hat?” Newt asked, even as a cold horror sank into Anathema’s gut. “They _were_ awfully rude, weren’t they?”

“That tall wanker in the bespoke suit’s the Archangel Gabriel?” Shadwell glowered. “Bugger didn’t even have a trumpet!”

“Oh, he did,” Aziraphale assured him. “Tucked away in adjacent-dimensional space along with his wings. Much handier than carrying the case around. He had a flaming sword, too, all ready to drive into Beelzebub when the battle started.”

“Hmph. Like zze’d let him,” said Crowley. “Ever try to hit a fly? Shame they insisted on a world-shattering last battle. If the war between Heaven and Hell could be settled by single combat between those two, I’d be there selling popcorn.”

“Gabriel _does_ work out and spar with Sandalphon a lot, dearest.”

“Yeah, but you can’t fight to the death and keep your suit clean. Beelzebub’s little, but zze wants an office with a window and a lock on the door more’n Gabriel’s ever wanted anything, and zze doesn’t believe in fair fights.”

“Well, we’re unlikely to find out who’d win _now,_ ” said Aziraphale. “The important question is, how far is either of them willing to go in order to vent their frustration at being denied their war? And who will they try to vent it on? The fact that they were willing to initiate a joint action in order to attack us is disturbing to a degree I’m not sure I can convey.”

“Wait,” said Newt. “Heaven teamed up with Hell?”

“Try to keep up, laddie,” said Shadwell. “Why do you think I’m retiring? All the old bets are off, Witchfinders living in sin with witches, may as well retire to the country with the Hoor of Babylon and raise pansies.”

“Now, Rob, let’s not get distracted,” said Madame Tracy. “If these people blame their disappointment on the only ones they talked to, then the next one they come after would be _Adam_. We can’t have that!”

And there it was - the cold horror that had frozen Anathema’s mouth shut laid out on the table with the sandwiches. She looked at Adam, who was in the middle of eating a deviled egg, his brows crinkled. He swallowed the bite in his mouth and said: “I could tell them to go away again - couldn’t I? Anyway, I’m not really the boy they’re looking for anymore.”

“I’m not sure they’d care,” said Crowley. 

“We’re not sure they _wouldn’t_ , either,” said Aziraphale. “The truth is, neither of us has ever been much involved in the, the politics of our respective sides. We’ve spent six thousand years on earth, and though we wouldn’t have it any other way, it leaves us rather out of the loop when it comes to predicting our ex-comrades’ behavior.”

Anathema’s horror finally burst out of her mouth in the form of anger. “He’s _eleven_! He shouldn’t have to worry about being attacked! _We’re_ the grown ups! It’s _our_ job to keep them away!”

Aziraphale beamed at her. “Exactly, my dear! Adam and his friends should be focusing on playing and training Dog and figuring out their sexualities and life goals. I’m glad Adam is here, because his unique position makes it imperative that he be alert to potential danger, but the question of how to protect him is one for the rest of us to answer.”

“Aye,” said Shadwell. “I’ll load the thundergun and keep it ready. I see hide or hair of either of those sods, we’ll see if their flaming swords are any good against bricks!”

“You two should move here, then,” said Adam. “You already beat them once.”

“We _didn’t_ beat them,” said Aziraphale. “We scared them, but we dealt them no actual damage. If we had, it would have been open warfare, regardless, I think, and brought about the very thing we wish to avoid.”

“I’m afraid if we lived here we’d draw them here,” said Crowley. “You’re hard to track down, Adam.”

“Tell me about it,” Anathema muttered.

“Sure, Gabe and Beelz have been to Tadfield, but all they did was follow the beacon of Armageddon. They’re both crap at Earth geography. It could take them years to find the place again. But _us_ they can find in a heartbeat. We up stakes and move here, after two centuries of headquartering in London? They’d home right in on that.”

“So do you have any actual helpful suggestions, or did you come here to tell us we’re screwed?” Anathema asked. Newt touched her knee under the table, soothingly, but she didn’t _want_ soothing. She wanted _action._

Aziraphale was still beaming. “An excellent question, and yes, we have a few ideas, and hope that, once you have the necessary knowledge base, you will be able to generate some of your own.”

“First thing is, if you see or hear or _smell_ anything that disturbs you, _call_ us,” said Crowley, flipping Adam a black and a white card. “Me first, because that’s a mobile, but if you can’t raise me call Aziraphale’s landline. We can be here almost instantly, riding the phone signals.”

Adam’s face bloomed into enthusiasm. “Brilliant! Could you teach me to do that?”

Crowley shook his head. “Sorry. Normal human bodies aren’t malleable enough.”

“It would be unwise of you, however, to depend on us,” said Aziraphale. “In the long term, this area needs to be warded against supernatural presences.” He turned to Anathema. “You know the kind of thing I mean.”

“Sure,” said Anathema. “I can do wards. But the whole town? That’d have to be huge. And shouldn’t it be super strong to keep out Archangels and Princes of Hell?”

“It should,” said Aziraphale. “It will also take several months to plan and execute. I have some ideas of my own along those lines - my shop is warded well enough to keep out both - but I was hoping to consult with you, and that you would be willing to undertake to be the primary caster.”

“But - why?” She must be missing something. “Without Agnes’s book, I’m an ordinary occultist. You’re an angel. He’s a demon. You two know more about this than I do. And you’re a lot more powerful.”

“We have six thousand years of experience apiece, sure,” said Crowley, “but _you’re_ human. You come from a long line of women of power, and you can _invent_ things. Heaven and Hell underestimate you. Don’t you go making the same mistake.”

“Also,” said Aziraphale, beginning to work on a piece of angel cake, “you can’t trust us.”

“Ha! Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Shadwell. Madame Tracy shushed him.

“I’m serious,” said Aziraphale. “We consider ourselves committed to the cause of humanity, but - we’re _not_ human. We won’t always know what’s in humanity’s best interest, my attempt on Adam’s life being a case in point. Nor is it inconceivable that circumstances could arise in which our commitment to humanity is lessened. If nothing else, we are each other’s great weakness. If forced to choose between humanity and each other, you _cannot_ rely on us to choose humanity.”

“He means me,” said Crowley. “I was ready to leave you all in a puddle of burning goo if he’d only have agreed to run off with me. _I’ll_ choose _him_ any time, every time, but _he’ll_ choose _you._ ”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “Odegra.”

“What?” Newt asked; but Anathema could see in Crowley’s face that Aziraphale had punctured his argument, and didn’t need to know why. “So you want me to make wards that exclude you? That’s probably simpler than making ones that let you in and keep everyone else out. But won’t that keep the phone trick from working?”

“That would depend on how you set it up. The telephone trick would be essentially summoning us, which wards can easily allow,” said Aziraphale. “This is potentially a complicated, time-consuming, taxing project, and I won’t pressure you to undertake it. If you refuse, I will look for someone else. As in so many endeavors, natural talent and early training are useful; but hard work and willingness to learn make up for the lack of them. I will admit, however, that you are first choice for the task by a huge margin. You have the great advantage of having been in since the beginning, and understand the base conditions and the urgency in a way I couldn’t expect anyone outside this room to do.”

Anathema wanted her laptop. More specifically, the maps she’d made while looking for Adam, with all the leys and spiritual currents color-coded on them.

“I bet _I_ could set wards,” said Adam.

“I’m sure we’re all willing to learn,” said Madame Tracy. “Though if it involves traipsing through the woods at night I don’t know how much good I’ll be.”

“She doesn’t have to decide right now, does she?” Newt asked. “I mean. She already saved the world once. It’s not her job to save Tadfield, too.”

“That’s the thing about free will,” said Crowley. “It’s there till the time runs out. Anybody here can refuse now and change their mind later. Or decide to do it now and quit in the middle. Everybody gets sixty chances a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty-four hours a day. Till an attack comes; and anybody who survives an attack can still change their mind afterward, one way or another. Or even get a better idea.”

Anathema barely heard them, watching the shifting images in her head: the wards around the cottage, her mother calling the corners and smudging the house in Malibu, an interesting configuration of leys she’d noticed in Hogback Wood when she was too busy seeking the Antichrist to examine them closely. It wouldn’t be like figuring out the prophecies. More like building a house from the ground up. 

Not following somebody else’s vision. Creating her own.

“Oh, I’ll do it,” she said. “But I’ll need somebody to keep R.P. Tyler off my back!”

Crowley grinned at her. “Leave the local busybodies to me.”

“No, Mr. Tyler’s my job,” said Adam. 

“Can I help?” Newt asked. “There’s no technology involved, right? I shouldn’t be able to blow it up or anything.”

Anathema took his hand. “Let’s find out.”


	4. The Puzzle of the Universe

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Anathema realizes she's not the only one who's been feeling lost.

The moving party split up into two groups shortly after lunch was cleared away (by Crowley snapping his fingers; a trick Anathema _really_ wanted to learn), with Crowley and the novices brainstorming ways and means of protecting Tadfield during the months of ward construction, while Anathema and Aziraphale walked down to Jasmine Cottage and put their heads together over her maps, discussing sigils, leys, power levels and sources, occult and ethereal vs. mundane energies, and so on. Talking to Aziraphale was a lot like talking to her book, if the book could respond and get adorably excited when she made a suggestion, instead of endlessly restating itself in the same words.

She sort of didn’t want to like him, but - she did.

They also discussed the book. Which didn’t have a split spine anymore, though it retained all the loving wear it had accumulated passing from hand to hand through her family tree over three hundred years.

“If I’d thought Agnes was telling me to kill Adam, I probably would have tried,” she admitted, as they went through the prophecies he considered to indicate Agnes’s ideas about Anathema. “I was so afraid of letting her down.”

“None of us truly know what we would or wouldn’t do, until we do it,” Aziraphale said. “And then you have to go forward, knowing that much more about yourself. I’m glad you weren’t tested in that way. It’s deeply unpleasant.”

Crowley and Newt came in after dark and fixed supper, after which the consultation resumed and Crowley gave Newt a crash course in warding basics. Sometime after midnight both she and Newt started yawning and the Odd Couple left, as alert as when they’d arrived. They hadn’t sought out a bathroom once all day, either. Possibly learning more about demonic/angelic physical needs would be useful, Anathema reflected, in protecting against them. She’d have to think of a way to ask about it that wasn’t too obnoxiously personal.

By the time Anathema brushed her teeth and donned her nightgown, she was bone-tired; but in a good way. She had work to do again, a complex puzzle of a universe to solve, something of her own to add to the world she’d played her part in saving. She didn’t know what would happen, but she knew she could have an active role, even without poor Agnes. 

She had expected Newt, who had spent a large part of the evening outside with The Them and Crowley, tramping the borders of Tadfield gathering tactical information, to be already asleep when she got to bed, but he was sitting up against his pillow with his arms around his knees, waiting for her. “So,” he said, as she climbed in beside him. “I guess you’ll be living here for quite awhile still.”

“I guess I will.” She found herself smiling at the thought as she plumped her pillows and snuggled down.

“So. Um. What do, I mean -“ He slid down onto one elbow, hovering above her. “I have to decide what I’m going to do.”

“Okay.” Right. Hanging around Tadfield figuring out if they were a long-term thing or what had not been in his plans, when he came up here to investigate Adam and unusual weather patterns. She should have wondered about that, before. “What are your options?”

“Well. I had been living with my mother. In Dorking. While I was between jobs. I was supposed to find my own place because I got a job. Only. I was fired the first day. So at some point I need to tell my mum I was fired and don’t have a place.”

“Okay. But you _do_ have a place. Here.” Sort of.

“Yeah, for awhile. Until, you know. And I need a job. I should be looking for one.”

“You have been.” Again, sort of. It’s hard to look for 21st century jobs if computers power down and take entire villages with them if you touch them. “You can stay here as long as you need to. Or until I go back to the States. Which looks now like it might be awhile. Or until we sort out - this - us thing.”

Newt smiled that sweet, bewildered smile of his. “Yeah, but, I can’t just drift until then. I mean, it’s not like there’s any doubt _how_ it’ll end.”

“Isn’t there?" She didn't like how he sounded, resigned and listless. "How will it end?”

“Oh, c’mon!” He flopped down on his back. “You’re - _you’re_ Hermione Grainger and _I_ never got a Hogwarts letter.” He pulled his pillow over his face.

Anathema pulled it off. “Really? You think I’m _Hermione?_ ”

“ _Duh._ An angel picked you to safeguard the whole town against Heaven and Hell. You saved the _world_ with a bunch of notecards. Hermione would be _flattered_ to be compared to you.”

Anathema laughed, and kissed him. “ _You’re_ the one who stopped the mass nuclear launch.”

“Yeah, by the weaponized power of my intense loserdom! Which _you_ weaponized. I would’ve dithered till we went up in a flash of light.” Nose to nose with her, he stroked her hair back. “And I like to think I’ve been some help since then. With you figuring out how you want to live now, and stuff. But you’ve got a new mission, and I don’t see how my loserdom will be any use with that, so...I’ll learn some witchcraft and help if I can and stay here as long as you want me, because you’re wonderful and I want to be around you. Anybody would! But sooner or later, you’ll want me to go away and I should have somewhere to go besides my mum’s. Also, not eager to tell my mum that I’m Hermione Grainger’s kept boyfriend. So I have to find a job. Construction workers don’t use computers, do they? Because I think I was being unrealistic trying to work in an office. I need to find something more physical. And if, if this is the best time for me to leave -”

“Shush.” Anathema put her finger on his mouth. “You’re looking at this backwards.”

“I don’t see how. I’m definitely not Hermione. Or Ron. I would _love_ to be Ron. Only, book Ron, not movie Ron.”

“Well, of course book Ron! Book Ron is awesome and doesn’t know it. Like you. You have this worldshaking power over computers, the things that _run our lives,_ only you think it’s a liability.”

“I’ve lost every job I ever held, couldn’t go to University, can’t carry a phone that does anything but make calls, am not allowed in the same room as your laptop - trust me, it’s a liability.”

“Because you don’t control it. Because you don’t _understand_ it. But - what if you came to understand it? What if we could keep using it?” Vectors, leys, and nodes of power danced across her mind’s eye as she focused on his aura. At first glance if was a modest one, much like Newt himself; but it was an unusual intense baby-blue color, and looking at it too long set up an odd vibration in her chakras.

“How?” Newt asked. “It’s, it’s a destructive force -“

“So’s fire. And I bet we know two people who could help us figure out how to tame it.”

Newt frowned. “You mean - ask Crowley and Aziraphale? Do you think they could cure me?“

“Maybe. Or maybe they could give us a more positive angle on it.”

“I’d hate to bother them -“

“Why? They don’t hesitate to bother us.” She pulled him into her arms and he came easily, resting his curly head on her collarbone. “I’m not saying, don’t look for a construction job or whatever. But stop thinking of yourself as a loser. You’re not _allowed_ to talk about my boyfriend that way. My boyfriend is sweet and supportive and adaptable and really good in bed and anybody that doesn’t think so has another think coming.”

“You think I’m good in bed?” She couldn’t see his face, but his ears turned bright pink.

“When you’re not too tired to function. Which we both are right now. It’s been a long day and we’ve both worked hard, so go to sleep.” She kissed the top of his head. “We can discuss how good you are in bed in the morning.”

Newt made a happy, acquiescent sound and hugged her tight. Anathema smiled into the darkness. She didn’t know whether she and Newt would be a permanent or a short-term commitment; but she’d just realized she was committed, for a time. To him; to Tadsfield; to protecting Adam and The Them; to a future as a formidable witch who could work with and face down angels and demons, as required. 

She didn’t know how it would all play out. But she was game to learn. 

-30-


End file.
